To summarize this thread, would a simple to use option be to be able to enable 'wisdom of the crowds' basically downranking sites that other users have downranked automatically. This would work well for spam, the tricky part is political content (left vs right for example as this is personal preference that we wouldn't be able to tell).
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Opt-in collaborative shared result ranking
I like the summary, but I have one suggestion. You called out downrank specifically, and I think that there might be danger/additional cosideration to be made if this was intentional.
I intuit many fewer 'social dragons' with an upvote-only solution. Upvote/Downvote functionality is a litle more challenging but perhaps balanced. Downvote only is perhaps an angry-mob-summoner for a few reasons.
I like "wisdom of the crowds" - I think it's a good perspective.
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I wince a bit when the conversation shifts to managing negative impacts around politics and user bias. My personal strategy for socially charged features such as this, is to maintain awareness and rigorously architect a solution that bias-free enough that there's not really anything in the delivery pipeline to point at as evil or unfair.
examples: (i'm just exploring possible foibles, not suggesting implementation here)
1: I choose "users who love github" as a sentiment pool to enable. I review the upvote-only list and see that stack exchange and some others are also prioritized. Why isn't devdocs.io listed? dunno, maybe i should upvote it and get others checking it out!
2: I choose "users who love github" as a sentiment pool to enable. I review the upvote/dowvote list and become offended that devdocs.io is deprioritized. the nerve of these kagi users, would do such a thing. I'm upvoting it.
3: I can't wrap my head around what a downvote-only capability would look like - insert downvote-only scenario here. why is devdocs.io deprioritized? this is ludicrous. it's just a reference agregator. I might just go chew someone out on kagifeedback. this is unacceptable.
I chose to use the "Users who also love" sort of paradigm very intentionally earlier in the thread. It's hard to target percieved political bias when the dimensions of grouping have nothing to do with politics. Sure there would be biases within user's shared sentiments, but they might be bucketized in a way that diminishes that impact perceptually and functionally.
Vlad Just be aware that such communal rankings can be what defines Kagi, which is in a sensitive state of growth.
I'd like to toot my own horn again, and beat my dead horse for my "Super Lenses" suggestion: https://kagifeedback.org/d/5051-suggestion-super-lenses-portals
It would enable people to subscribe to rankings and avoid associating Kagi strictly with one political party, one nation and one distro (Arch Linux).
This is dangerously close to making Kagi the next Reddit. We assume that all users have same search behaviour instead of “personalised” ranking. The strength is my Kagi is MY Kagi. I pay for it because the rankings are what I prefer, not what others do.
Google already does this based on other users behaviour. They float ads that you are likely to click if you searched X because they know more users that look for X will be tempted to click an ad.
When Kagi grows, bots might take over (paying for accounts won’t be an issue) because you can deploy bots to keep floating certain webpages or sources as “crowd prefered”.
Why would anyone go to those lengths? Because if Kagi is the future of search, it will not be liked by sites that make money by serving ads to more people. So to get more people to click on that site is by floating it back to the top. Right now it doesn’t even exist on my search list but what will stop this happening?
Also “personalised search” is my Kagi USP.
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I agree about reddit, and feel like Reddit is kind of a cesspool with a handfull of decent subreddits floating at the top nowadays. I don't want that, but I think that an up/down vote option is a far cry from user submitted and commented links.
Try to keep in mind that kagi's user base is not a captive audience, and I don't think it will be treated as one in the future. Kagi is also (hopefully) not sneaky and will not scheme against the user. This defangs the ad revenue generators a bit, and also disincentivizes bot voters quite a bit. This changes my own view on the overall situation.
Kagi (bless them) kinda upsets a lot of the current predatory business models when they behave as a faithful actor, rather than a two-faced adversary.
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Being able to create shareable and modular lists of adjustments to your rankings would be nice for crowdsourcing the labor of curating results.
This builds off my "bug" report and this feature suggestion about marking sites as AI generated together with my experience using Bluesky's Moderation Lists
Note: I know there's Lenses which can be shared, but their functionality is really meant for, as the name implies, very specific and repeated search situations.
Ranking Lists would be groups of adjustments that could be subscribed to and merged into your existing rankings (where your "global" adjustments take priority). This way if it would be possible for people to say highlight a collection of high quality blogs or provide a good starter kit for addressing SEO mills about a topic they follow (programming is obvious, but it easily applies to gardening, cooking, and hobbies generally).
When making an adjustment on the popover there would be a way of adding it to a list (graphic design is, in fact, not a huge passion)
A ranking adjustment could be on multiple lists, but (and I recognize this might be controversial to some people) the adjustment itself would be global to your account. If you're deeming a website useful or not in general it's context shouldn't matter. That's where Lenses would come into play.
Because of that I could see the current Personalized Results settings page continuing to exist but having a way of seeing the lists a domain is on (maybe the same list selection interface as the popover), plus an additional detail page for managing/viewing lists individually. More or less replicating what Bluesky has going on.
Some design thoughts:
- There would need to be a visualization indicating if a modification you've made overwrites something on a list or if a domain was added by a list and not by you
- Conflicts between lists (since it's not just "here's a list, take one specific action" as with Bluesky) would need to be addressed
- It may make sense to limit lists to
RaiseandLowerwith noPinsorBlocksor making accepting those an option, similar to how Bluesky hasMuteorBlocksubscription types
I'm sure there's a world of technical reasons this would be difficult to implement in the backend, but I think it would be a great addition to the platform!
P.S. the Personal Results settings page uses a Select for the selected adjustment, but the Domain Leaderboard lets you choose using a Radio Button Group
7 days later
dysiode thanks for the detailed explanation. I believe the problem you're addressing is the same discussed in this thread - https://kagifeedback.org/d/4502-opt-in-collaborative-shared-result-ranking ; I'llmerge them unless I misunderstood something (?)
I like this explicit approach of shareable lists. This is a topic we're going to spend some time analysing and defining next steps. We'll keep the main thread updated.
Merged 2 posts from Sharable Ranking Adjustment Lists .
16 days later
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This is a pivotal feature and Bluesky is showing/leading the way. Their approach is a good proof that users are sensible to ranking algorithms & will use them.
This helps Kagi provide more value & personnalisation without associating itself with an idea or another.
Getting the ball rolling on "Custom Lenses SDK" early on will add another dimension to Kagi, I guess a good part of the userbase is tech literate but building a strong dev community & open source ranking algorithms must take a little time !
10 days later
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It's interesting to see the comparison with the Bluesky collaborative ranking tools. This is a critical feature of decentralized social media: block lists, promote lists, etc. Same with adblockers... domain reputation is everything. uBlock Origin is only as good as its block lists. It would be amazing if Kagi to published these kinds of lists.
It would be something like a Private Tracker: it's a database curated by and for a defined, trusted population. In this case, people who care enough about search quality to pay for Kagi. Kagi would need to be very thoughtful about how to receive trusted feedback from users without reducing privacy. Privacy Pass might be a valuable foundation for this.
Lets see if I can state this as clear user stories...
As a Kagi Subscriber, I want Kagi's high-quality signals about publisher quality & relevance available on other platforms. When Kagi thinks a domain is used for spam or other malfeasance, I want my adblocker to block that domain. When Kagi thinks a user on a decentralized social media platform is fake account, spammer, or otherwise fraudulent, I want that user to be automatically blocked from my feeds on that platform.
As a Kagi Subscriber and decentralized social media user, I am willing to share my personal moderation decisions pseudonymously with Kagi in return for access to blocker feeds/moderation lists. I don't want Kagi to build a database of my social media behavior explicitly tied to my account, but I'm comfortable sending a stream of block/unfollow/report events tied to a stable ID that is not otherwise linked to my Kagi account. I expect that Kagi will use this identifying information exclusively to prevent abuse of the reporting service.
As a Kagi Subscriber, I want the ability to search social media at scale, including the long tail of decentralized social media instances. I expect these searches to be ranked based on high-quality signals. Users who share links to low-reputation domains or are frequently blocked by other Kagi users should be downranked.
6 days later
pbronez I'm not a decentralised social media user but I do observe what goes on on them, and frankly the community blocklists seem to be a total shitfest, if you'll excuse my language. I've seen competing blocklists, rivalry between blocklist maintainers, said warring maintainers adding each other and anyone who reacts with their rival to blocklists, etc.
The amount of people out of Kagi's 40k users who are going to not only have an account on decentralised social media, actively curate a blocklist (e.g. I'm on X and don't block anyone, even accounts I find annoying/distasteful), AND are willing to connect their SM to Kagi I'm willing to bet is less than 100. Remember the 90/9/1 rule?
Simply put, I don't want my search results influenced by a tiny group of users of (not to be offensive) completely unknown biases, community drama, mental stability, etc. Of course one can then say that I don't have to enable this feature, but then why build it? I'm sure many people feel the same way, Kagi is billed as an unbiased, you-first search engine after all. I'd rather see dev time that would be spent on this going towards improving search in other ways.
Feature: The ability for users to flag a search result as AI slop, or clickbait.
Outcome: Improve search result quality.
User Side:
Users could click the three dot menu next to a search result and instead of hiding a result, they could flag a search result as AI slop/Clickbait. Flagged websites would then be hidden from a user's search results in perpetuity.
Function:
To offload workload from Kagi devs, flagged sites could sent to a community review portal. Individual members could review a site and, if a site meets a certain threshold, it gets filtered into admin/dev portal for final processing. An incentive system could be utilized to attract and retain community volunteers, like flair, badges or discounts.
Complications:
The most privacy-focused way that this could work is that just the page is displayed for review. The best way that this could work is to display the flagged site plus the search query, though this could be used for possible user identification.
Notes:
A resolution system should also be added by site owners who wish to dispute an AI Slop/Clickbait label. The dispute process could function the same as the takedown process (Community > Dev > Action)
6 days later
It would be nice to be able to turn this off, and/or to be able to set exceptions.
This could also be implemented as community filters, like curators on steam but for raising/lowering domains
I'll merge this thread with another on the same subject. We're currently focused on shipping some important projects, but I hope we can share a few ideas on how to accomplish this soon
Merged 4 posts from Ai slop.
9 days later
carl
I really like your idea and agree that these communal rankings could get really messy and political for Kagi. It should stay simple and have features that enhance rather than replace like Kagi's philosophy states. I feel like these communal ranking features end up replacing once search and creates a sphere of influence.
marcel001122 Couldn't agree more with your point and touches upon what I am trying to say in the above paragraph. Foundational features like this are very dangerous and like someone said before in this thread, it creates a pandoras box.
The super lenses idea I believe is the best solution/compromise to this OP's requests, from what I've read.
Enabling the subscription to rankings created by users using the super lenses idea, rather than a communal automatic ranking system, would avoid associating kagi with certain opinions as well as alleviate the risk of the default Kagi search being taken over by bots or certain groups pushing their website cause they managed to get the highest communal ranks.
14 days later
I thought in the past of doing exactly that for my own search engine (before discovering Kagi), and I quickly realized that the time spent on a website is not proportional to its quality, in many cases it is actually the opposite.
Plus, it would worsen the SEO problem and just make websites optimize for you to spend more time there.
A more manual but less flawed approach would be community rating, literally just rating the results manually, but even that is a very flawed approach, since it could allow mass-downvoting or upvoting potentially instrumented, and also, nobody wants a big popup saying "please rank as a good result if you liked this".
In reality allowing "community" based ranking will probably never work because it will end up being instrumented.
10 days later
Vlad I would not have a downvote/upvote system for search results. I don't need to do that on other search engines, so why would I need to do it on Kagi?